4/19/2006 @ 9:00AM

Bread And Circuses

Two warriors face off on the field of battle. Both are lethal, living weapons, trained to a level of fitness nearly incomprehensible to the average man. Countless hours of their lives have been spent honing their skills and their bodies to a fine point. Every ounce of their spirit is focused on a single purpose: to stop and destroy the other.

The moment comes, the two advance and in a flurry of blows, they collide, bone and sinew connecting with crippling force. If one succeeds in his task, he will have overrun the other, beating him into submission.

It’s a brutal scenario, but it happens nearly every weekend on cable sports channels and in arenas around the world. It’s simply the collision of two modern gladiators, and whether you’re watching football, rugby, ice hockey, judo or boxing, it’s an essential part of the game.

Anxious parents and condescending politicians decry violence in sports, blaming game-day aggression for everything from street fights to murder. But the truth is far more complicated. The aggressive acts we see on the field are in fact healthy expressions of base emotionsand watching them not only helps us to stay in touch with our true selves; it also helps us control our own violent impulses.

It’s time to reconsider violence in sports and embrace the essential humanity of watching two grown men beat each other’s brains out.

Why not bring back blood sport? Allow full-on gladiatorial combat? Sports are already violent. People are already being hurt. It’s time to accept that fact and understand why it’s important.

It’s hypocritical to suggest that we’re somehow above violent sports. Consider what happens on the average football field or hockey rink; men tackle and hit one another, using physical strength to knock the other down and move ahead. If someone hip-checked you in a grocery store, or on a street corner, you’d have them arrested. But in a stadium, we accept it and embrace it.

The picture gets even more blurry when you consider combat sports like boxing, judo and wrestling. In these activities, competitors actually face off for a fight, and points are awarded for delivering punishing blows. Where else would such behavior be tolerated? Only one other place: on a battlefield. So why pretend that there is some civilized barrier between sport and war?

One might argue that in sport, your intent is never specifically to injure, while in combat, that is the objective. But such an argument presents a simplistic view of the sporting world. Pitchers bean batters. Point guards throw elbows. And linebackers aim to take a quarterback out of the game by any means necessary.

Anyone ignorant of what sort of crippling aggression underlies professional sports should be forced to watch a tape of Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann getting his leg shattered by New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, or heavyweight Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear during a boxing match.

Tyson returned to fight again, and in 1999, Lawrence Taylor was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. How is that any better than celebrating a gladiator who wins a fair fight against an armed and willing opponent?

The ancient Greeks had it right. In his book Combat Sports in the Ancient World, classicist Michael B. Poliakoff describes how sports like wrestling, boxing and stick fighting arose to take the place of actual warfare:

“Not long after Homer’s time, it became virtually impossible for anyone to excel in war the way Achilleus and Ajax had done, as the era of heroic single combat yielded to the superior power of the tightly organized and unified phalanx,” he writes. “Thus the battlefield was no longer a proving ground for maverick skill and honor, and the city became the arbiter of glory and reward.”

Is it unreasonable to expect, in our age of increasingly impersonal, remote-controlled-bombing wars, that we find our heroes in the realm of combat sports instead?

What the Greeks understood is that consuming violence as a spectator can be a healthy and positive experience. By watching highly trained, willing participants hack and slash at each other, we’re able to explore aspects of our own personalities in a safe environment. Fear, anger and rage are essential human emotionsbetter that we experience them vicariously and come to understand them through the actions of others than to deny them and have them spill out on unwilling victims.

“Although frustration and anger may not be eliminated at the ballpark, other emotions can and do get a vigorous workout,” wrote D.L. Wann, a psychology professor at Murray State University, in a 2001 paper on violence in sports. “To the extent sports fans choose to express their emotions, freely and openly, they and society are the better for it.”

So to what end does this all lead? Should we encourage fights to the death? Perhaps. Allowing willing participants to risk life and limb should be accepted if it is the informed decision of all participants. There’s a legal principle called volenti non fit injuria“to a willing person, no injury is done.” It holds true for athletes as well. If a person wants to risk death in the pursuit of fame, they should be allowed to do so.

And of course, they already do. Every time a boxer enters the ring or a quarterback faces 300-pound linebackers, they are taking their lives in their hands. Gladiatorial combat is simply more honest about the risks the competitors are taking.

Two thousand years ago, the philosopher Philo wrote, “I know wrestlers and [fighters] often persevere out of love for honor and zeal for victory to the point of death, when their bodies are giving up and they keep drawing breath and struggling on spirit alone, a spirit which they have accustomed to reject fear scornfully. … Among these competitors, death for the sake of an olive or celery crown is glorious.”